Demise of the Navajo Generating Station

Here's the Quora question: How can California go completely to electric cars when we already experience brown-outs and other rolling blackouts due to not having enough electricity?

This answer by Quora user Edw says it all.

California is decommissioning its nuclear plants. Wind and solar won't be able to take up the slack so it will have to buy power from nuclear and coal plants in neighboring states.

That might not be as easy as it once was. More on that in a moment. I upvoted the answer and left a comment of agreement.

Yes, you are correct. California has been sucking all the electricity from Hoover Dam for decades. The Colorado River and Hoover Dam are on the border between Arizona (where I live) and Nevada. Yet my state only gets 10% of the electricity generated by the hydroelectric power from Hoover Dam. Nevada gets about the same. California takes over 50%.

There's more. Californian insanity has spread like a contagion to states north and east of California, and now they are decommissioning their nuclear power and coal plants too!

Let me tell you about another victim, not a nuclear plant, but important nonetheless

The Navajo Generating Station

The Navajo Nation operated a coal power plant on reservation land for DECADES. They were forced to shut it down in 2019. Green liberal Democrats and Republican renewable energy business didn’t care that the Navajo Generating Station had kept the reservation energy-independent. It is a tragedy how 700 Navajo people lost their good jobs, that were right there, on the reservation in northeast Arizona. The generating station produced more energy than needed locally, so the extra was sold through interties to the electric power grid. AND the coal was mined locally!

The Navajo nation protested regulatory demands for plant closure, instigated by California, to no avail. Although it was located on supposedly sovereign native American land, The State shut down their power plant. There is nothing to replace it. 

Google Maps retrospective

I was curious, and had a look at what Google Maps reviews had to say about the Navajo Generating Station, which was run with assistance from a Maricopa County public utility, the Salt River Project. I reproduced some of the reviews here. 

Wind and solar will never replace nuclear and coal, despite what John Kerry and other attendees at COP say. This first review describes solar only advocates as ignorami.

This guy HATED the Navajo Generating Station, as it detracted from his Lake Powell experience, OMG!

The Dutch didn’t like it. 

 

The Germans didn't like it either. Spoiled their photography apparently.

Only one person remarked upon a very important detail.

Too late, it is gone, sadly.

These reviews by visitors from 15 years ago really touched my heart. 

Oleksandr T said,

Nice and modern facility!

Derek Wong said,

LOVE IT. Can't stop staring at it, even from miles away. Wish they gave tours.

An Italian guy described it rather lyrically (I read it, with help from Google Translate):

For many it is an eco-monster that ruins Monument Valley. Leaving aside the ethical discourses, on a photographic level it is a very interesting scenario: this modern and dark cathedral that emerges from the red desert just before Page, seems to be in a future Blade Runner style.

Tours of the facility were available to the public, for many years.

Read more about the remarkable Navajo Generating Station of Page, Arizona here: Navajo Generating Station. There are even a few photos.

Vertically integrated

Recall how I said the coal used by the generating station was sourced locally? They did one better: the Navajo Nation owned that coal mine! 

They also had a 100% air-gapped electric railroad (air gapped from any other rail lines, that is) for transporting coal from their mine to the power plant. The Navajo’s Black Mesa & Lake Powell Railroad was one of the first to use an electrified line. Electricity was supplied by the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, of course. The Kayenta Mine employed another 400 Navajo Indians, in addition to the 700 at the power plant.

Yes, there is clean coal... well, cleaner coal

The Navajo Nation’s Kayenta coal mine's coal is special. It is bituminous not anthracite. Bituminous coal is low-sulfur with average mercury content of 0.04 parts per million which is 90% less than most shale rock! 

Emissions from bituminous coal used by the generating station were lower than 95% of other coal-fired electric plants in the United States. The EPA said to put sulfur dioxide wet scrubbers on it anyway, so they did. 

In 2006, the Clean Air Act came along. Although there were no regulations requiring it, the Navajos voluntarily installed low NOx-SOFA burners for good measure. No, I don’t think that means they burned couches that emitted nitrous oxide but I’m uncertain of the genuine meaning so I’ll say no more.